In a recent interview, Mike Wilson, global head of Logistics and Manufacturing at Panalpina, and newly chaired honorary visiting professor at Cardiff Business School, talked to professor Aris Syntetos, from the School’s Panalpina Research Centre, about manufacturing and supply chain trends, Sino-US trade conflicts and who will be the ultimate winners in global logistics.

If rockets can be reused, then a lot of other things should be too! Today is World Remanufacturing Day. Remanufacturing and the circular economy go hand in hand and Panalpina helps its customers make the transition to circular supply chains in multiple industries; remanufacturing mobile phones, repairing telecoms equipment, repacking fashion products and screening and testing optical equipment.

The purchase of a product often marks the end of a supply chain. But increasingly consumers are questioning the traditional linear process of “take, make, dispose”, demanding that manufacturers and retailers ensure that they reduce or eliminate waste. In the circular economy, logistics companies play an important role in extending the life of products through reuse, remanufacturing and recycling.

Last week, Lloyd’s Loading List reported on Panalpina’s pioneering Logistics Manufacturing Services (LMS). Panalpina first introduced LMS for the telecoms industry in Brazil in 2014 and soon afterwards expanded the offering to Panama and Dubai where a new state-of-the-art facility was officially opened in March 2017.

How often have you taken your car to the garage for a simple repair only to have to wait days or weeks for a spare part to arrive? We have all experienced the frustration, but now the answer is easy: We can simply make the part when we need it. Well, it isn't quite so easy, hurdles remain, but today we're basically able to manufacture a product where and when we want it, thanks to the makerspace.

Panalpina has reached a new milestone in the roll-out of its single warehouse management system JDA across all of its logistics facilities around the world. The 50th site went live with JDA WMS in France. Shortly before that, JDA WMS was implemented at facilities in the USA and Belgium. The sites in Newtown and Brussels are part of a global distribution network for the healthcare customer IBA.

​Manufacturing products in Asia and shipping them across the globe is no longer sustainable – neither from a competitive nor an environmental perspective. In the new world of manufacturing, take-make-dispose supply chains are morphing into distributed, circular and sustainable supply chains. The drivers behind this development are product modularization, the makerspace movement, and 3D printing.

Panalpina and Cardiff Business School have strengthened their partnership with the launch of a new Logistics Manufacturing Research Centre. The center will conduct leading research into the fields of distributed manufacturing, 3D printing, the circular economy and the impact of digital manufacturing on global supply chains. The new center has already secured its first research grant.

Panalpina and 3D printing company Shapeways have entered into a strategic partnership which will enable both companies to expand their digital manufacturing capabilities globally. Panalpina sees digital manufacturing and 3D printing as a perfect complement to its Logistics Manufacturing Services offering, giving customers the possibility to customize products and bring production closer to demand.

36 Million 20-foot containers were moved through the port of Shanghai in 2015. In the world’s biggest port, the very physical nature of international trade is apparent like nowhere else. Globally, 130 million containers are shipped across the seas year after year – of which Panalpina handled 1.6 million for its customers in 2014. Daryl Ridgway is Panalpina’s new global head of Ocean Freight.

Will the flow of information become more important than the flow of goods? Fact is, new modes of transport are not where the frontier of transportation lies. Digital transformation is. This blog post in two parts looks at five major trends that are shaping the freight forwarding and logistics industry – all of them linked to digital transformation.

Will the flow of information become more important than the flow of goods? Fact is, new modes of transport are not where the frontier of transportation lies. Digital transformation is. This blog post in two parts looks at five major trends that are shaping the freight forwarding and logistics industry – all of them linked to digital transformation.

Dubai has become the latest location where Panalpina offers Logistics Manufacturing Services to its customers. Rather than holding stock to cover every possible outcome, Panalpina assembles products from semi-knocked down (SKD) units to specific customer requirements at the last possible stage before shipping them to the end customer.

Panalpina sees reverse logistics as a strategic area for growth. To complement its reverse logistics offering in the technology sector, Panalpina has entered into a strategic alliance with Hong Kong-based company Spread Logistics.